Last week Apple announced that it was postponing the release of
Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard". Previously expected "sometime in the
spring", Mac users will have to wait until October.
A sidebar to that story is what effect the delay will have on
Boot Camp users.
A bit of background: When Apple first released their
Intel-powered Macs, early in 2006, there was a lot of speculation
about the ability to boot Windows on them. A contest was announced
with a prize of some $14,000 that had been raised online; it was
won by a pair of users who had devised a somewhat cumbersome hack
that allowed users to install and boot Windows on their Intel Macs
- but it destroyed the original Mac OS partition in the process.
(See Windows XP on Macintel a
Reality).
A few weeks later, Apple released Boot Camp, which
accomplished the same thing in a much nicer fashion -
non-destructively resizing the Mac's hard drive partition, making
it possible to install Windows XP SP2 (only) and choose to boot to
either Windows or Mac OS X.
Boot Camp also allowed user to create a Windows driver disc to
help the Windows installation work with the hardware on the various
Macintel models. By January 2007, there had been over 1.5 million
downloads of Boot Camp.
Apple was
clear at the time that Boot Camp was beta software: "preview
software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time." It
was expected that Boot Camp would be officially released along with
Leopard.
Over time, Apple has released several updates to Boot Camp;
these did a better job of letting Windows work with the Mac
keyboard, iSight camera, and other features. The current version,
1.2, also added support for Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating
system.
That "limited time" mentioned above is set to end on September
30, 2007, according to the Boot Camp
License, which states that the license "will terminate
automatically without notice from Apple upon the next commercial
release of the Apple Software, or September 30, 2007, whichever
occurs first." This would have been at least three months after the
expected spring release of Leopard.
Now that's no longer the case.
So what's a worst-case scenario for Boot Camp users?
I have a
Windows installation in a partition created using Boot Camp. I have
no fears that it will stop working on October 1st. Apple
spokesperson Lynn Fox told CNN News: "The Windows installation on a
user's Mac will continue to work after the Boot Camp license
expires."
I fully expect to be able to choose to boot to either OS X or
Windows on my iMac, just as I can today, either using the Startup
Disk system preference or by holding down the Option key when the
startup chime rings.
However, Fox also noted that the Boot Camp Assistant will no
longer work when the trial period ends. Boot Camp Assistant is the
utility that Apple provides to burn a Windows driver disc and
create a partition for the Windows install. If that times-out at
the end of the trial period, users will no longer be able to use it
to create new Boot Camp Windows installations.
Existing Boot Camp users have little need for the Assistant's
features--they've already used it. Except for the last Assistant
option: 'Restore the startup disc to a single volume' - in other
words, to remove their Windows installation.
Just as the Boot Camp Assistant can be used to non-destructively
create a partition for a Windows installation while leaving the
Mac's operating system and files intact, it can be used to get rid
of the Windows partition and restore the Mac partition to its full
size. That's a handy ability for users wanting to experiment with
booting to Windows but who don't really need to commit to keeping
it on their Mac forever.
When the Boot Camp beta's trial period ends, having a Boot Camp
Windows partition on your Mac will mean a permanent relationship.
You may never choose to boot to Windows, but you're now committed
to dedicating that amount of hard drive space to it. Moreover, Fox
noted that Apple would not be updating Windows drivers for Boot
Camp beta users after the end of the trial period.
At least until Leopard's release.
Apple has discussed Boot Camp as a feature for Leopard, but
there's been a lot of speculation about what Apple actually has in
mind. Among the theories: The Boot Camp release version could be
bundled with Leopard but also made available as a stand-alone (and
no longer free) utility for OS X 10.4 users. A
July 2006 report predicted a US$30 cost for 10.4 users.
Other speculation claims that Apple is working to add
virtualization features to Boot Camp, perhaps letting users opt to
either boot directly into Windows (as with the current Boot Camp
betas) or run their Boot Camp installation in a virtual session
while running the Mac OS (as can be done with both the current
Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion Beta).
Prior to Apple's announcement that it was postponing Leopard's
release, rumour site DigiTimes
predicted the postponement. They claimed that the delay was Boot
Camp-related - that it was needed "to allow Apple to make Leopard
support Windows Vista through an integrated version of its Boot
Camp software." While Boot Camp already supports Vista, the key
word here is "integrated" - presumably something like the
Parallels/VMware virtualization.
As with most rumours, Apple is not commenting.
Of course, there's also nothing stopping Apple from releasing an
updated Boot Camp beta/trial version sometime between now and
September 30th and extending the trial period beyond the current
deadline.
The bottom line is that current Boot Camp users have nothing to
fear from the Leopard delay.
But as the end of the trial period approaches, users might want
to think twice before downloading the Boot Camp beta - if they're
not sure they want to commit to having Windows on their Mac, when
the deadline arrives they may find themselves with no free and easy
way to say goodbye. 
